Nature of comets

Cometary nuclei

Telescopic observations from Earth and spacecraft missions to comets have revealed much about their nuclei. Cometary nuclei are small solid bodies, typically only a few kilometres in diameter and composed of roughly equal parts of volatile ices, fine silicate dust, and organic materials. The ices are dominated by water ice (about 80 percent of the total ices) but also include carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, formaldehyde, and methanol. The silicate and organic mix is similar to that found in the most primitive meteorites, carbonaceous chondrites. The materials are intimately mixed at micron scales (one micron is one millionth of a metre).

The nuclei formed in the solar nebula 4.56 billion years ago as dust and ice particles settled to the central plane of the nebula. When those particles collided, they tended to stick. Micron-sized particles grew through that process of agglomeration and accretion to metre-sized and then kilometre-sized bodies.

When cometary nuclei come close to the Sun, the ices on or near their surfaces sublimate, transforming directly from the solid to the vapour phase. The gasmolecules flow off the nucleus surface, carrying with them silicate and organic dust that had been embedded in the ices. The outflowing mix of materials then forms the cometary coma, the comet’s atmosphere. Because cometary nuclei are small, their gravity is too weak to retain that atmosphere, and it flows freely out into space.

Because the different ices sublimate at different temperatures, gases are liberated from different depths below the surface as the solar heat wave penetrates into the surface. Therefore, the layers closest to the surface become progressively depleted in the most volatile ices. A lag deposit of nonvolatile dust, which is typically made of particles too large to be lifted by the escaping gases, develops on the surface. The nonvolatile layer can become so thick that it effectively insulates the icy component below it, preventing further sublimation.

Another feature of cometary activity is driven by the fact that the water ice in comets condensed at very low temperatures, less than 100 K (−173 °C [−280 °F]). At those low temperatures, ice forms in the amorphous state, a random ordering of water molecules. As the amorphous water ice is warmed above 110 K (−163 °C [−262 °F]), it begins to transform to crystalline ice, first in the cubic form and then the normal hexagonal ice experienced on Earth. The transition is complete at about 153 K (−120 °C [−184 °F]). It is an exothermic reaction—i.e., it releases energy. That energy further sustains the reaction as it warms the ice around it but dies out because it must also warm the nonvolatile dust components of the nucleus. The amorphous-to-crystalline ice transition may be one source of cometary outbursts—sharp increases in cometary activity that appear to occur randomly. It can likely explain the unusual brightness of dynamically new comets as they approach the Sun for the first time. New comets likely experience the amorphous-to-crystalline ice phase transition at between 5 and 7 AU (748 and 1,047 million km [465 and 651 million miles]) and are often discovered at that distance.

The internal structure of cometary nuclei is still an area of speculation. It is generally believed that as icy planetesimals came together at low velocity (on the order of metres per second) in the solar nebula, there was not enough energy to melt or compress them into a single solid body. The two leading explanations suggest that cometary nuclei are “fluffy aggregates,” first proposed by American astronomer Bertram Donn and British astronomer David Hughes in 1982, or “primordial rubble piles,” proposed by American astronomer Paul Weissman (the author of this article) in 1986, with low binding strength and high porosity. Key data supporting these models are estimates of nucleus bulk density, ranging from 0.2 to 1.0 gram per cubic centimetre, with preferred values of about 0.3–0.6 gram per cubic centimetre. This suggests a combined microscopic and macroscopic porosity of about 60 percent or more, a very high value.

Additional evidence for the rubble pile model for cometary nuclei comes from observations of split (disrupted) cometary nuclei. Observations show that nuclei can randomly break apart, shedding a few or many pieces. Those pieces have typically been estimated to be between 8 and 60 metres (26 and 197 feet) in diameter. In some cases, the entire nucleus is disrupted. Disruption can also occur if the nucleus passes too close to the Sun or to a large planet like Jupiter, where gravitational tides tear the weakly bound nucleus apart. That has been observed for Sun-grazing comets, comets with perihelia within one solar radius of the Sun’s photosphere.

A particularly interesting case of a tidally disrupted nucleus is that of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. That comet was discovered in 1993 as a string of 21 separate but co-moving active nuclei Observations showed that the comet had been captured into orbit around Jupiter and had passed so close to Jupiter on its last perijove passage, 1.3 Jupiter radii (93,000 km [58,000 miles]), that it was tidally disrupted. A suggested explanation was that the nucleus was a rubble pile and had broken into thousands of separate “cometesimals.” As that swarm of bodies moved away from Jupiter, their own self-gravity caused them to clump together. Interestingly, the number of final clumps depended on the bulk density of the original nucleus. The best fit was obtained for bulk densities of about 0.5–0.6 gram per cubic centimetre. The original nucleus was estimated to be 1.6 km (1 mile) in diameter, a fairly typical nucleus size. Thus, Shoemaker-Levy 9 is another proof of a low-density rubble pile or aggregate structure for cometary nuclei.

Fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 lined up along the comet’s orbital path, in a composite of …

NASA/STScI/H.A. Weaver and T.E. Smith

As noted above, nuclei can display “outbursts,” which are large sudden releases of dust and gas. The most famous was from the comet 17P/Holmes in 2007, which brightened by 15 magnitudes (one million times brighter) in less than two days. One possible explanation is the amorphous ice transition to crystalline ice. Another possible explanation is rotational spin-up due to torques from the coma outgassing as ices sublimate on the surface of the irregularly shaped nucleus.

Cometary atmospheres

Because of the small size and low gravity of the cometary nuclei, the evolving gases from sublimating ices expand freely into the vacuum of space. Entrained in the outflowing gas are fine dust particles, typically one micron in size, composed of silicates, organics, and sometimes additional ice. Because the molecules are exposed to sunlight, they begin to disassociate, breaking up into radicals and individual atoms. The most common case of this is the water molecule, H2O, which disassociates into H and OH. Organic dust grains appear to also release molecules and radicals into the outflowing coma, the most common of which are CN, C2, and C3. Those are known as “daughter” molecules, and cometary spectroscopy is used to study the chemistry that goes on in the coma as the parent and daughter molecules, radicals, and individual atoms react with each other. The ice included in the grains sublimates as they move away from the nucleus, providing an extended source of organics and other volatiles. It is also possible that the water ice contains clathrates, other volatile gases trapped in the crystalline water ice matrix.

The observed composition of volatiles in cometary comae is very similar to that seen in dense, cold interstellar clouds where stars and solar systems are being formed. That provides additional evidence that comets are frozen remnants of the primordial solar nebula, preserving unmodified volatiles from the formation of the planetary system 4.56 billion years ago.

Cometary comae often show geyser-like structures, or “jets,” which are taken as evidence of individual active areas on the surfaces of the nuclei. As noted above, lag deposits of large dust grains can shut down sublimation on the surface. Because the nature of the source vents for the cometary activity is as yet unknown, there is no good explanation as to why some areas remain active and others do not. It is known that this is likely an aging effect, as the active fraction on the nucleus is large for long-period and Halley-type comets, which have made relatively few approaches close to the Sun, and very low, typically only a few percent, for short-period, Jupiter-family comets, which have made hundreds of returns, on average.

The shape of the coma is explained by the “fountain model,” in which dust and gas are liberated on the Sun-facing hemisphere of the nucleus and flow radially outward from the nucleus normal to the surface. The dust particles experience solar radiation pressure, which gradually slows them and then accelerates them in the anti-Sun direction. That creates a rounded “head” to the coma, typically up to 100,000 km (60,000 miles) in diameter.

Tails

In 1951 German astronomer Ludwig Biermann studied the tails of comets and showed that the ion tails flowed away from the Sun at speeds in excess of 400 km (250 miles) per second. He suggested that the phenomenon had to be associated with some sort of “corpuscular radiation” flowing outward from the Sun. In fact, he had suggested the existence of the solar wind, which was not directly detected for another 8 years.

The outflowing dust and gas in the coma interacts with the solar wind and sunlight. The molecules and free radicals are ionized by charge exchange with the solar wind. Once ionized, they are caught up in the Sun’s magnetic field and flow away at high velocity in the solar wind. The process forms long, narrow, straight trails that glow blue in colour because of the presence of CO+ molecules. However, the major ion in cometary ion tails is H2O+, which does not glow at visible wavelengths. Those tails point almost exactly away from the Sun because the solar wind velocity is typically about 400 km per second, much larger than the orbital velocities of almost all comets. The ion or plasma tails are known as Type I tails.

Sometimes the ion tails of comets will disconnect from the coma and slowly fade while the comet grows a new ion tail. That is caused by the comet crossing magnetic sector boundaries in the Sun’s magnetic field.

The fine dust suffers a different fate as it is blown away from the Sun by radiation pressure on the tiny grains. That forms a broad, curved, sometimes yellow-coloured tail following the comet in its orbit and pointed generally away from the Sun, which is known as a Type II tail. The grains are blown into a larger orbit than the comet nucleus, and that results in their slowing because of the laws of planetary motion, causing them to lag behind the nucleus. The dust follows the comet around its orbit but eventually disperses into the zodiacal dust cloud.

In 1986 American astronomer Mark Sykes and colleagues discovered faint trails of material in images of the sky taken by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite. Sykes showed that those trails matched the orbits of several well-known periodic comets, including Encke’s Comet and 10P/Tempel 2. Further analysis showed that the trails were collections of relatively large particles, from 100 microns to 1 cm in radius, that had been ejected from the comets but whose orbits changed very slowly because they were too big for solar radiation pressure to easily push around.

Some comets display anti-tails that are pointed straight at the Sun. These are only seen as Earth passes through the comet’s orbital plane. However, what is seen is a projection effect, and the anti-tails are actually the Type II dust trail curving behind the nucleus into the line of sight.

Comet Arend-Roland photographed on April 25, 1957. The prominent anti-tail extending from the coma …

Courtesy of Lick Observatory, University of California

Dynamics

Comets are typically in more-eccentric and more-inclined orbits than are other bodies in the solar system. In general, comets were initially classified into two dynamical groups: the short-period comets with orbital periods shorter than 200 years and the long-period comets with orbital periods longer than 200 years. The short-period comets were split into two groups, the Jupiter-family comets with periods shorter than about 20 years and the Halley-type comets with periods longer than 20 years but shorter than 200 years. In 1996 American astronomer Harold Levison introduced a new taxonomy that involved a quantity called the Tisserand parameter:

T = aJ/a + 2 [(a/aJ) (1 − e2)]1/2 cos i

where a, e, and i are the semimajor axis, eccentricity, and inclination of the comet’s orbit, respectively, and aJ is the semimajor axis of Jupiter’s orbit. The Tisserand parameter is approximately constant for any given comet orbit and was created by the French astronomer Félix Tisserand in order to recognize and identify returning periodic comets even though their orbits had been perturbed by Jupiter.

Jupiter-family comets have Tisserand (T) parameters between 2.0 and 3.0, and Halley-type and long-period comets have T values less than 2.0. Asteroids generally have T values greater than 3.0. However, there are both some periodic comets whose orbits have evolved to T values greater than 3 and some asteroids with T values less than 3. Many of the latter have been shown to be likely extinct or inactive comet nuclei.

Another important difference in the dynamical groups is their orbital inclination distributions. Jupiter-family comets typically have orbits that are modestly inclined to the ecliptic (the plane of Earth’s orbit), with inclinations up to about 35°. Halley-type comets can have much higher inclinations, including retrograde orbits that go around the Sun in the opposite direction, though not totally randomized. The long-period comets have totally random inclinations and can approach the planetary system from all directions. As a result, the Jupiter-family comets are also known as “ecliptic comets,” whereas the long-period comets are also known as “nearly isotropic comets.”

The inclinations of the cometary orbits provide important clues to their origin. As mentioned above, dynamical simulations show that the great concentration of Jupiter-family comet orbits close to the ecliptic can only originate from a flattened source of comets. That source is the Kuiper belt, a flattened disk of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune and extending to at least 50 AU from the Sun. The Kuiper belt is analogous to the asteroid belt and is composed of ice-rich bodies that never had enough time to form into a larger planet.

More specifically, the source of the Jupiter-family comets is called the scattered disk, Kuiper belt comets that are in more inclined and eccentric orbits but with perihelia close to Neptune. Neptune can gravitationally scatter comets from the scattered disk inward to become Jupiter-family comets or outward to the Oort cloud.

As described above, the source of the long-period comets is the Oort cloud, surrounding the solar system and stretching to interstellar distances. The key to recognizing this was the distribution of orbital energies, which showed that a large fraction of the long-period comets were in very distant orbits with semimajor axes of ~25,000 AU or more. The orbits of comets in the Oort cloud are so distant that they are perturbed by random passing stars and by tidal forces from the galactic disk. Again, dynamical simulations show that the Oort cloud is the only possible explanation for the observed number of comets with very distant orbits that are still gravitationally bound to the solar system.

Oort cloud comets are in random orbits in both inclination and orientation. There are, however, some deviations from randomness that reveal the importance of the galactic tide in sending comets into the visible region where they can be observed. The galactic tide and stellar perturbations must act together to provide a steady-state flux of new long-period comets.

The general explanation for the formation of comets in the Oort cloud is that they are icy planetesimals from the giant planets region. As they formed, the growing giant planets gravitationally scattered the remaining planetesimals from their zones. That is an inefficient process, only about 4 percent of ejected comets being captured into the Oort cloud. Most of the rest are ejected on hyperbolic orbits to interstellar space.

It is also possible that if the Sun formed in a cluster of stars, as most stars do, then it might have exchanged comets with the growing Oort clouds of those nearby stars. That could be a significant contributor to the Oort cloud population.

The source of the Halley-type comets with their intermediate inclinations and eccentricities is still a matter of debate. Both the scattered disk and the Oort cloud have been suggested as sources. It may be that the explanation lies with a combination of the two cometary reservoirs.

Astronomers have often debated the existence of interstellar comets. Only a few observed comets have hyperbolic orbit solutions, and those are always just barely hyperbolic with eccentricities up to about 1.0575. That translates to comets with excess velocities of about 1–2 km (0.5–1 mile) per second, a very small and unlikely value, given that the Sun’s motion relative to the nearby stars is about 20 km (12 miles) per second. A truly interstellar comet with that excess velocity would have an eccentricity of 2.

Comet impact hazard

Comets pose a natural hazard to Earth. That is because many of them are in orbits that cross Earth’s and may collide with it. Approximately 10 long-period comets on the order of 1 km (0.6 mile) in diameter (or larger) cross Earth’s orbit each year. Because Earth is a relatively small target and space is vast, the impact probability per comet is, on average, very low. A random long-period comet in an Earth-crossing orbit has an average impact probability of 2.2 10−9. That means that, on average, one long-period comet will strike Earth for every 454 million comets that cross its orbit. Given the estimated rate of 10 comets crossing Earth’s orbit per year, that results in a mean time between long-period comet impacts of 45 million years.

However, because the long-period comets move on highly eccentric and highly inclined orbits, their mean impact velocities are much higher than for other celestial bodies—i.e., asteroids. The average long-period comet will strike Earth with a velocity of 51.7 km (32.1 miles) per second. If the impact velocity is weighted by the probability of impact for a particular orbit, then the weighted mean impact velocity increases to 54.6 km (33.9 miles) per second. Those values are much higher than those for Earth-crossing asteroids, which are typically only about 15 km (9 miles) per second.

An interesting case is that of Earth-crossing long-period Comet Hale-Bopp (C/1995 O1), which passed closest to the Sun in 1997. Hale-Bopp was an unusually large and active comet, easily seen with the naked eye in evening skies. With a perihelion distance of 0.914 AU, Hale-Bopp’s orbit crossed inside Earth’s orbit. Hale-Bopp was believed to have an unusually large nucleus, estimated to be 27–42 km (17–26 miles) in diameter. Taking a median value of 35 km (22 miles) and assuming a mean bulk density of 0.6 gram per cubic centimetre results in an estimated mass of 1.3 1019 grams.

The impact probability for Hale-Bopp on Earth is 2.54 10−9 per perihelion passage, fairly typical for a long-period comet. Because of the comet’s high orbital eccentricity, 0.9951, and inclination, 89.43°, the impact velocity would be 52.9 km (32.9 miles) per second. The resulting impact energy is equivalent to 4.4 billion megatons of TNT. That is about 44 times the estimated energy of the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Such an energetic impact may completely sterilize Earth, resulting in the extinction of all life on the planet. Fortunately, Hale-Bopp passed through the plane of Earth’s orbit on the far side of the Sun from Earth, so there was never any possibility of an impact. The average time between impacts of cometary nuclei as large as Hale-Bopp also far exceeds the age of the solar system.

That illustrates an important point about the cometary impact hazard. Although asteroid impacts are far more frequent than comet impacts, some comets crossing Earth’s orbit are considerably larger than any of the known near-Earth asteroids. Thus, the largest and most-devastating impacts on Earth are likely to be comets. Other known Earth-crossing comets with large nuclei include Halley’s Comet, 16 by 8 km (10 by 5 miles) in diameter, and Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, about 23–30 km (14–19 km) in diameter.

The flux of long-period comets can also vary over time. If a star comes close enough to the Sun to pass through the Oort cloud, in particular at distances less than 10,000 AU, then the star can cause a “shower” of comets to enter the planetary system. The rate of long-period comets crossing Earth’s orbit could increase by a factor of 200, and the complete shower would last for about 2.5 million years. Fortunately, such close stellar passages are rare, about one every 300 million years.

For Jupiter-family comets, the mean time between comet impacts is 28 million years. For Halley-type comets, the mean time between comet impacts is 521 million years. Note that the impact frequency for both Jupiter-family and Halley-type comets may be higher if there are yet undiscovered members of each group.

Comets are among the most-interesting bodies in the solar system because they retain a cosmo-chemical record of the physical and chemical conditions at the time the planets formed. They have been kept in “cold storage” far from the Sun during most of the solar system’s history and thus are essentially unmodified from their primitive state 4.56 billion years ago. Comets pose a small but significant part of the impact hazard on Earth and may account for the largest impacts on Earth over the past three billion years.

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A comet is a small chunk of dust and ice that orbits, or travels around, the sun. It is sometimes described as a "dirty snowball." There are billions of comets in the solar system, but most never pass close by Earth. The best-known comet is called Halley’s Comet. It can be seen from Earth about every 76 years.

When near the Sun, the small bodies called comets develop a hazy cloud of gases and dust. They also often develop long, glowing tails. However, a comet exists as only a small core of ice and dust for most or even its entire orbit around the Sun. Comets can be easily seen from Earth only when they approach the Sun closely. Even then, most are visible only with a telescope. Among the exceptionally bright "naked eye" comets seen from Earth after 1900 were the Great Comet of 1910, Halley’s, Skjellerup-Maristany, Seki-Lines, Ikeya-Seki, Arend-Roland, Bennett, West, Hyakutake, Hale-Bopp, McNaught, and Holmes. When comets are far from the Sun, they appear in large telescopes as a point of light, like a star.